Quantum beam splitter based on free charged particles.

It is well known that the beam splitter is an integral part of many classical and quantum devices. The use of beam splitters in quantum technologies is currently particularly relevant. The emergence of new types of beam splitters provides new statistical characteristics of the separated photon beam and their control and new possibilities for use in various devices. This Letter presents a new, to the best of our knowledge, type of beam splitter based on free charged particles. This type of beam splitter has all the properties of a linear beam splitter with its reflection coefficient R, transmission coefficient T, and phase shift ϕ, which are presented in a simple analytical form. This type of beam splitter has interesting application prospects.

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE EXPECTATIONS WITH CONTROL OF VOLITIONAL EFFORT IN YOUNG AND OLD AGES AS RISK FACTORS OF SOCIAL AGING.

An elderly person is the subject of changes and development of the basic conditions of his life. Older patients may experience manifestations of social aging, in which some new areas of social reality remain unexplored for them. This article analyzes dispositional optimism and locus of control, as two personal characteristics closely related to the social and psychological aspects. The aim of the study was to examine the relationship between dispositional optimism and locus of control in young and old people. During the study, 115 elderly respondents from the Gerontological Center were surveyed. The average age was 70 [52-74]. A survey of 120 students of the Krasnoyarsk State Medical University of the first, second, third and fourth years, whose average age was 20 [19-25] was conducted. The majority of elderly patients were classified as having an external locus of control (54%), while 46% had an internal locus of control. Regarding optimism, 20% of older people were optimists, 73% were pessimists, and 7% of respondents had a combination of both optimism and pessimism. The majority of young respondents also fell into the category with an external locus of control (70%), while 30% had an internal locus of control. 73% of young people were optimists, 19% were pessimists, and 8% of respondents had a combination of both optimism and pessimism. In older people, there is an inverse relationship between the indicators - the level of internality is inversely proportional to the level of optimism, which is explained by the expectation that bad events will happen more often in the future than good ones. Accordingly, it is necessary to introduce practical recommendations.

Evidence of the Anomalous Fluctuating Magnetic State by Pressure-Driven 4f Valence Change in EuNiGe3.

In rare-earth compounds with valence fluctuation, the proximity of the 4f level to the Fermi energy leads to instabilities of the charge configuration and the magnetic moment. Here, we provide direct experimental evidence for an induced magnetic polarization of the Eu3+ atomic shell with J = 0, due to intra-atomic exchange and spin-orbital coupling interactions with the Eu2+ atomic shell. By applying external pressure, a transition from antiferromagnetic to a fluctuating behavior in EuNiGe3 single crystals is probed. Magnetic polarization is observed for both valence states of Eu2+ and Eu3+ across the entire pressure range. The anomalous magnetism is discussed in terms of a homogeneous intermediate valence state where frustrated Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya couplings are enhanced by the onset of spin-orbital interaction and engender a chiral spin-liquid-like precursor.

Pure rotational R(0) and R(1) lines of CO in Ar baths: experimental broadening, shifting and mixing parameters in a wide pressure range versus ab initio calculations.

The results of a rigorous study of the two first pure rotational transitions of CO perturbed by Ar are presented. The experimental part is based on the use of three different spectrometers covering together the pressure range from 0.02 up to 1500 torr. The measurement results of collisional line shape parameters are supported by fully ab initio calculations, which are in remarkable agreement with retrieved data. A sub-percent uncertainty of line intensity measurements is achieved and the first firm evidence that the resonance spectrum of CO is observed on the continual pedestal is given. We analyze the results of our ab initio calculations on the basis of early analytical theories and demonstrate a good general applicability of the latter to the CO-Ar collisional system.

Predictive modeling of antibacterial activity of ionic liquids by machine learning methods.

Structural variation and different bioactivity of ionic liquids (ILs) make them highly promising for the development of novel biocides. Application of computational methods to the evaluation of potential antibacterial activity of chemical compounds is a useful, time- and cost-saving tool replacing numerous experimental syntheses. In the present study, quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) modeling is applied to develop models (based on more than 800 data points) aiming to predict the minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) of ILs against three types of human pathogens - Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The random forest model with the AlvaDesc descriptors in general demonstrates the best performance for all the three types of bacteria and is suggested as a final model. To interpret the final model and determine the most significant descriptors, a SHapley Additive exPlanation (SHAP) method was applied. Six amino acid ILs, which were synthesized for the first time, and five halogenide ionic liquids purchased, all based on 1-alkyl-3methylimidozolium cations with different alkyl chain lengths, C10, C12 and C14, are tested in vitro and used to validate the developed QSAR models. The data sets and developed model are available free of charge at http://ochem.eu/article/147386.

Specificity of scattering of ultrashort laser pulses by molecules with polyatomic structure.

The theory of scattering of ultrashort laser pulses (USP) is the basis of diffraction analysis of matter using modern USP sources. At present, the peculiarities of interaction of USP with complex structures are not well developed. In general, the research focuses on the features of the interaction of USP with simple systems, these are atoms and simple molecules. Here we present a theory of scattering of ultrashort laser pulses on molecules with a multi-atomic structure, taking into account the specifics of the interaction of USP with such a substance. The simplicity of the obtained expressions allows them to be used in diffraction analysis. As an example, the scattering spectra of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA) are presented. It is shown that the theory developed here is more general in the scattering theory and passes into the previously known one if we consider the duration of the USP to be sufficiently long.

Quantum entanglement and statistics of photons on a beam splitter in the form of coupled waveguides.

It is well known that a beam splitter (BS) can be used as a source of photon quantum entanglement. This is due to the fact that the statistics of photons changes at the output ports of the BS. Usually, quantum entanglement and photon statistics take into account the constancy of the reflection coefficient R or the transmission coefficient T of the BS, where [Formula: see text]. It has recently been shown that if BS is used in the form of coupled waveguides, the coefficients R and T will depend on the photon frequencies. In this paper, it is shown that the quantum entanglement and statistics of photons at the output ports of a BS can change significantly if a BS is used in the form of coupled waveguides, where the coefficients R and T are frequency-dependent.

[Improvement of acute destructive pancreatitis management]. / Stentirovanie glavnogo pankreaticheskogo protoka v kompleksnom lechenii patsientov s ostrym destruktivnym pankreatitom.

OBJECTIVE: To reduce the incidence of complications in acute destructive pancreatitis via stenting of the main pancreatic duct in complex treatment of these patients. MATERIAL AND METHODS: There were 182 patients aged 31-76 (mean 42.8±11) years with acute destructive pancreatitis. All patients admitted to the 1st and the 2nd surgical departments of the Kazan City Hospital No. 7 for the period from 2017 to 2019. There were 78 (43%) men and 104 (57%) women. Two groups of patients were distinguished in order to compare the effectiveness of stenting of the main pancreatic duct in acute pancreatitis: main group (34 patients including 14 men and 20 women) - stenting of the main pancreatic duct, control group (50 patients including 20 men and 30 women) without stenting. RESULTS: Complex diagnosis and treatment of acute pancreatitis in intensive care unit with percutaneous drainage of fluid accumulations under ultrasound control and stenting of the main pancreatic duct reduce postoperative mortality from 16% in the control group (n=50) to 9.2% in the main group (n=34). Moreover, this approach is valuable to localize the foci of pancreatic necrosis in 79% of cases. the An efficiency of endoscopic decompression of the main pancreatic duct was 42% in patients with alcoholic pancreatitis. CONCLUSION: Endoscopic stenting of the main pancreatic duct is effective for pathogenetic treatment of patients with biliary pancreatitis, aimed at reducing intraductal hypertension in the early stages of disease.

[Glycol and Phosphate Depot Forms of 4- and/or 5-Modified Nucleosides Exhibiting Antibacterial Activity].

Resistance developed to the majority of drugs used to treat infectious diseases warrants the design of new compounds effective against drug-resistant strains of pathogens. Recently, several groups of modified nucleosides have been synthesized and showed significant antibacterial activity in vitro, but their further studies were difficult to undertake because of their low solubility in aqueous solutions. Nevertheless, new compounds, well soluble in water-organic solutions, were synthesized and found to be more effective in inhibiting the growth of Gram-positive bacteria and mycobacteria. The water-soluble forms of modified nucleosides under study were assumed to be their depot forms. To check the assumption, the compounds were tested for hydrolysis in various media and their molecular docking was performed into the active center of the putative target, Mycobacterium tuberculosis flavin-dependent thymidylate synthase ThyX. Computer modelling showed that the water-soluble analogs do not act as ThyX inhibitors, supporting the assumption of their depot nature. The compounds were resistant to chemical hydrolysis but were hydrolyzed when incubated with porcine liver carboxylesterase, human serum, or Staphylococcus aureus 209P. The results demonstrate that the compounds are most likely depot forms of modified nucleosides.

X-ray diffraction analysis of matter taking into account the second harmonic in the scattering of powerful ultrashort pulses of an electromagnetic field.

It is well known that the scattering of ultrashort pulses (USPs) of an electromagnetic field in the X-ray frequency range can be used in diffraction analysis. When such USPs are scattered by various polyatomic objects, a diffraction pattern appears from which the structure of the object can be determined. Today, there is a technical possibility of creating powerful USP sources and the analysis of the scattering spectra of such pulses is a high-precision instrument for studying the structure of matter. As a rule, such scattering occurs at a frequency close to the carrier frequency of the incident USP. In this work, it is shown that for high-power USPs, where the magnetic component of USPs cannot be neglected, scattering at the second harmonic appears. The scattering of USPs by the second harmonic has a characteristic diffraction pattern which can be used to judge the structure of the scattering object; combining the scattering spectra at the first and second harmonics therefore greatly enhances the diffraction analysis of matter. Scattering spectra at the first and second harmonics are shown for various polyatomic objects: examples considered are 2D and 3D materials such as graphene, carbon nanotubes, and hybrid structures consisting of nanotubes. The theory developed in this work can be applied to various multivolume objects and is quite simple for X-ray structural analysis, because it is based on analytical expressions.

Mechanical unfolding of spectrin reveals a super-exponential dependence of unfolding rate on force.

We investigated the mechanical unfolding of single spectrin molecules over a broad range of loading rates and thus unfolding forces by combining magnetic tweezers with atomic force microscopy. We find that the mean unfolding force increases logarithmically with loading rate at low loading rates, but the increase slows at loading rates above 1pN/s. This behavior indicates an unfolding rate that increases exponentially with the applied force at low forces, as expected on the basis of one-dimensional models of protein unfolding. At higher forces, however, the increase of the unfolding rate with the force becomes faster than exponential, which may indicate anti-Hammond behavior where the structures of the folded and transition states become more different as their free energies become more similar. Such behavior is rarely observed and can be explained by either a change in the unfolding pathway or as a reflection of a multidimensional energy landscape of proteins under force.

[Five-year survival and outcomes of chronic hip stump ischemia treatment]. / Piatiletniaia vyzhivaemost' i rezul'taty lecheniia khronicheskoi ishemii kul'ti bedra.

AIM: To investigate five-year survival, short- and long-term outcomes of hip stump ischemia treatment. MATERIAL AND METHODS: There were 383 patients with hip stump in 1997-2013. Critical hip stump ischemia in 3 months after amputation occurred in 45 patients. RESULTS: Two-fold decrease of 5-year survival was found. Five-year survival was higher 3 times in patients after arterial reconstruction compared with those without revascularization. The same tendency was confirmed in analysis of groups standardized by gender, age and type of arterial disease.

DMSO-Free Cryopreservation of Human Umbilical Cord Tissue.

Human umbilical cord represents a source of multipotent stromal cells of a supreme therapeutic potential. The cells can be isolated from either fresh or cryopreserved umbilical cord tissues. DMSO is a cryoprotectant most commonly used for preservation of umbilical cord tissues; however, cyto- and genotoxicity of this compound is evident and well documented. In the present study we performed successful cryopreservation of the umbilical cord tissue using other cryoprotectants: propylene glycol, ethylene glycol, and glycerol. Of these, 1.5 M ethylene glycol and 20% glycerol turned out to be the best in terms of the preservation of living cells within the frozen tissue, early onset of migration of these cells out of the thawed explants, and overall efficacy of multipotent stromal cell isolation. Cryobanking of tissues can improve availability of multiple cell products for medical purposes and promote the development of personalized medicine.

[Ischaemia of a femoral stump in short- and long-term periods after limb amputation]. / Ishemiia kul'ti bedra v rannem i pozdnem periodakh posle amputatsii.

The authors retrospectively analysed medical case histories of 287 patients subjected to femoral amputations over the period from January 1, 1998 to December 31, 2013. The studied parameters were as follows: the frequency of and risk factors for femoral stump ischaemia, as well as the effect on patients' survival after femoral amputation. Amongst 156 patients having endured transfemoral truncation of the limb performed as the first amputation, early femoral stump ischaemia (EFSI) within 3 postoperative months was found to have occurred in 43 (27.6%) patients, whereas amongst 127 patients first subjected to amputation of the crus and then to femoral truncation it occurred in 15 (13.2%) cases; p<0.05. The incidence rate of late femoral stump ischaemia (LFSI) was virtually similar in both groups, amounting to 5.8% (9 of 156) and 5.5% (7 of 127), respectively; p>0.05. The survival rate for patients without stump ischaemia at 12 months after amputation amounted to 79.4%, for those with EFSI to 50.0% (p=0.00928), and for those with LFSI to 71.4% (p=0.22576), whereas by the end of a 5-year follow up period these values appeared to equal 49.2%, 32.1% (p=0.13225) and 7.1% (p=0.01385), respectively. The obtained findings demonstrated that the risk factors for EFSI were as follows: the presence of a femoral stump on the contralateral side, grade III ischaemia, and proximal localization of the lesion of the arterial bed (odds ratio 3.3, 2.7 and 3.8, respectively); a risk factor for LFSI was the presence of a femoral stump on the contralateral side (odds ratio 6.0).

Biomonitoring of selected persistent organic pollutants (PCDD/Fs, PCBs and PBDEs) in Finnish and Russian terrestrial and aquatic animal species.

BACKGROUND: The Finnish and Russian animal species (semi-domesticated reindeer, Finnish wild moose, Baltic grey seal and Baltic herring) samples were biomonitored in terrestrial and aquatic environments for polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans (PCDD/Fs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polybrominated diphenylethers (PBDEs). RESULTS: Grey seal (Halichoerus grypus) was clearly the most contaminated species. The mean PBDE concentration in grey seal was 115 ng/g fat, and the highest WHO-PCDD/F-PCB-TEQ (toxic equivalent set by WHO) was 327 pg/g fat. In Finnish, reindeer WHO-PCDD/F-TEQ varied from 0.92 pg/g fat in muscle to 90.8 pg/g fat in liver. WHO-PCDD/F-TEQ in moose liver samples was in the range of 0.7-4.26 pg/g fat, and WHO-PCB-TEQ in the range of 0.42-3.34 pg/g fat. Overall moose had clearly lower PCDD/F and DL-PCB concentrations in their liver than reindeer. CONCLUSIONS: Terrestrial animals generally had low POP concentrations, but in reindeer liver dioxin levels were quite high. All Finnish and Russian reindeer liver samples exceeded the EU maximum level [8] for PCDD/Fs (10 pg/g fat), which is currently set for bovine animals.

Efficiency of recombinant thymosin ß4 in spontaneous mouse model of chronic dermatitis.

The therapeutic efficiency of recombinant thymosin ß4 (rTß4) synthesized by us was studied in vivo on spontaneous CBRB mouse model that is adequate to human chronic dermatitis. Three applications of the drug during a week significantly alleviated symptoms of the disease in female mice, and in complex with subsequent antibacterial and antifungal therapy led to a pronounced and lasting (2 months) therapeutic effect. The results attest to a possibility of using rTß4 in combination with the known treatment protocols for chronic inflammatory diseases of the skin.

Magnetic properties of granular CoCrPt:SiO 2 thin films deposited on GaSb nanocones.

We report on the effect of microstructure and geometrically induced modifications of the magnetic properties of granular CoCrPt:SiO2 films with weakly interacting magnetic grains deposited on pre-structured GaSb nanocone templates fabricated by an ion erosion technique. By tuning the irradiation conditions, nanocone patterns of different cone sizes were prepared (from 28 to 120 nm in diameter and 32 to 330 nm high, respectively). The influence of the intergranular exchange coupling was also investigated by varying the SiO2 content from 8 to 12 at.%. Deposition of CoCrPt:SiO2 on samples with small nanocones leads to a close magnetic grain packing, which results in the formation of extended magnetic domains larger than the average distance between the GaSb cones. In contrast, on larger nanocones, the magnetic coating grows on the side-walls, with a large separation between neighboring cones, leading to magnetic single-domain regions, which are correlated to the underlying structure. Magnetometry indicates that both remanence and coercivity decrease with increasing cone size and/or SiO2 content due to a combined effect of the angular distribution of the magnetic easy axis of the grains and the intergranular exchange coupling strength.

Time-resolved magnetic imaging in an aberration-corrected, energy-filtered photoemission electron microscope.

We report on the implementation and usage of a synchrotron-based time-resolving operation mode in an aberration-corrected, energy-filtered photoemission electron microscope. The setup consists of a new type of sample holder, which enables fast magnetization reversal of the sample by sub-ns pulses of up to 10 mT. Within the sample holder current pulses are generated by a fast avalanche photo diode and transformed into magnetic fields by means of a microstrip line. For more efficient use of the synchrotron time structure, we developed an electrostatic deflection gating mechanism capable of beam blanking within a few nanoseconds. This allows us to operate the setup in the hybrid bunch mode of the storage ring facility, selecting one or several bright singular light pulses which are temporally well-separated from the normal high-intensity multibunch pulse pattern.

Probing the energy barriers and magnetization reversal processes of nanoperforated membrane based percolated media.

Magnetization reversal processes in Co/Pt multilayers prepared on nanoperforated templates are probed by magnetization relaxation measurements. The signature of pinning controlled domain wall movement as expected for percolated media is identified. This contrasts with the nucleation-type reversal mechanism of a Co/Pt reference film prepared on a smooth substrate. A zero field energy barrier of 93kBT is determined by fluctuation field measurements and is elucidated by micromagnetic calculations using the nudged elastic band method. This value is sufficiently large to qualify the material as a promising percolated medium.